Mapping the farm

In the vastness of the Upper Midwest, the fields and farms can inevitably begin to look the same. Yet each enterprise is like a small country, with its own particular history and culture. By chronicling a single family's tenure on the land, John Hildebrand here gives us an extraordinary survey, at once panoramic and intimate, of one family's farm over more than a century - and a moving account of a vanishing way of life. The family is Hildebrand's wife Sharon's, and the farm is 240 acres of pristine cropland near Rochester, Minnesota. O'Neills have farmed this place since 1880, when their Irish immigrant ancestors headed west; but now, after four generations, the future is uncertain. Still, the family farm remains one version of the original American dream, and this book recounts a singular clan's struggle to keep that dream alive. This is the story of good times and hardships and revolutionary changes; of livestock auctions and county fairs; of weddings, funerals, and the rituals of country life by which half of all Americans used to live, and a dwindling few still do. We follow the seasonal cycle of chores as crops are planted, weather is watched, cows are bred, and unpredictable events interrupt the everyday routine. And we see how the O'Neills have made this place their home, how as a nation we've changed, what we've learned, what we've lost.